


Prototype

by nolightss



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, M/M, POV Second Person, Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 21:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3090323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolightss/pseuds/nolightss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He was small, smaller than you, leaning heavily on an old metal crutch, with wires peaking out of the collar of the beat up jacket he was wearing. His eyes were dark, almost blending in with his hair, and a constellation of freckles danced across his sooty skin."</p>
<p>Jack and Crutchie and a cyberpunk future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prototype

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely a work in progress, and hopefully I'll update it consistently if my brain decides to cooperate.
> 
> I've been doing a lot of art and brainstorming for this universe on my tumblr [here](http://crutchies.tumblr.com/tagged/show-me-that-you're-human) if you want to know a little more about the worldbuilding for this fic.

You found him, or rather, he found you on the run from some shopkeep, some man with an affinity for the battery you’d taken off with, and the boy had yanked you into an alleyway at the last second. You watched the man carry off down the street, shouting curses before looking at the boy next to you. He’d fixed you with such a disbelieving look you couldn’t help but laugh and put a hand on his shoulder. He was small, smaller than you, leaning heavily on an old metal crutch, with wires peaking out of the collar of the beat up jacket he was wearing. His eyes were dark, almost blending in with his hair, and a constellation of freckles danced across his sooty skin.

 

“Thanks, kid,” you got out, still catching your breath, and stuck a hand out to him. “Jack.”

 

He eyed the hand, amused look still playing on his features, before taking it with a smirk.

“Crutchie.”  

 

“Don’t tell me your parents named you that.”

 

“Nah. I did!” he exclaimed, wariness melting away.  

 

You laugh at that, before turning to the fire escape snaking the side of the building beside you.

“I’ll see you round then, Crutchie.”

 

-

 

You didn’t see Crutchie again for several days, not until you spotted him on the edge of a rooftop you were passing across. You spent most of your days carrying messages from person to person in the lower-city, and all of your down-time building things, fixing things, making new of the old.

 

You figured the message could wait, and joined him, seated on the crumbling concrete of the roof. The lights of the highways above, the middle-ways, cast a blue light onto both of you, sending his features into sharp relief, making his expression even more intense.  

 

“You got a place to stay, kid?” you ask, out of some desire for companionship mixed with a feeling in your gut that says, _don’t leave him here, Jack Kelly, don’t you dare._

 

He looked at you with the same smile you’d seen before.

 

“Are you offering?”

 

“I mean, I don’t got much of one either,” you confessed, “but I figure if we stick together, things might be a little easier.”

 

Crutchie nodded and pulled himself up, facing you.

 

“Yeah. I’d like that.” His smile could light up the whole upper city, could power the whole world, and you want to take it for yourself, want to light every grimy alleyway with it.

 

-

 

He started delivering messages alongside you, started taking short routes on the ground while you took the rooftop ones, and you both began to form a group around you, a group of other messengers, of others on the streets of the lower-city, both synthetic and human.

 

You showed him to your favorite rooftop, the one on a now-abandoned 8th avenue, and showed him just how the stars looked, peaking through the upper city buildings on a clear night.

 

He slept next to you on that rooftop, curled against you and you found yourself growing more attached than you ever intended, but thinking that maybe, just maybe, that’s not such a bad thing after all.

 

 


End file.
